Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, will leave the company at year-end to launch a research startup focused on advanced AI that understands the physical world, retains persistent memory, reasons, and plans complex actions. Meta will partner with the new company, though some projects will remain independent of Meta’s commercial aims. His exit comes after recent AI job cuts at Meta and a $14.3 billion strategic investment in Scale, reflecting a shift toward more commercially driven AI initiatives.
Yann LeCun to Leave Meta at Year-End to Launch Advanced AI Research Startup
Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, will leave the company at year-end to launch a research startup focused on advanced AI that understands the physical world, retains persistent memory, reasons, and plans complex actions. Meta will partner with the new company, though some projects will remain independent of Meta’s commercial aims. His exit comes after recent AI job cuts at Meta and a $14.3 billion strategic investment in Scale, reflecting a shift toward more commercially driven AI initiatives.
05:59 AM, 11/20/2025Technology
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist and one of the field's pioneers, announced he will leave the company at the end of the year to found a research-focused AI startup. According to his social media post, the new venture will pursue advanced systems that can understand the physical world, maintain persistent memory, reason, and plan complex sequences of actions.
What he announced
LeCun said Meta will partner with the startup; some research projects will align with Meta’s commercial objectives while others will remain independent of the company's business priorities. The announcement follows more than a week of speculation and comes amid recent organizational shifts at Meta.
Context and implications
Meta trimmed roughly 600 AI roles this fall and in June made a significant strategic move by investing $14.3 billion in the AI data company Scale and recruiting Scale’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, to help lead efforts aimed at developing what the company described as "superintelligence." CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pushed to scale Meta’s commercial AI initiatives in the face of competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI.
LeCun’s departure highlights a broader tension inside the industry between long-term, curiosity-driven research and short-term commercial development. LeCun has publicly questioned whether current large language models — the technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT — are the right path to better-than-human intelligence, even as he supports open-source approaches such as Meta’s LLaMA models.
Background
LeCun joined Facebook in 2013 and co-founded its AI research arm (formerly FAIR). He stepped down as the division’s director in 2018 but remained Meta’s chief AI scientist. Outside Meta, he is a part-time professor at New York University, where he has taught since 2003.
A native of France who also studied in Canada, LeCun began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories’ image processing group, working on systems that could recognize text in digitized images. In 2019 he shared the Turing Award — computer science’s highest honor — with Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton.
Why it matters
LeCun’s new startup could push research into areas that larger tech companies deprioritize in favor of commercial products, while a partnership with Meta may allow selected projects to scale. Observers will watch whether his move signals a surge in independent, long-horizon AI research or a reorientation of talent within the industry.
Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.